#I have cishet male friends unfortunately I can say this

[olderthannetfic]

This might be a somewhat controversial opinion/rant, but as a black queer woman (i really id myself as being more genderqueer, but since i'm afab there are just things about womanhood growing up that has just stuck with me as formative experiences.), I find it really difficult to build community with queer men, even in fandom. I've tried to have friendships with transmen, but so many just feel the need to ramp up misogyny to 1000 to validate themselves as men, and then with gay men, some will say the most out-of-pocket, misogynistic things but because they're not attracted to women, it's somehow okay, I guess. But lately, there's been this trend among queer men of saying and doing misogynistic things but justifying it by stating they're talking about white, cishet women. But the thing is, there's nothing in what they said that can be specifically applied to only white women. It's a target to all women (I refuse to play the oppression olympics of who has it worse). And now I see other queer women in fandom saying the same things to each other. I typically stay in anime/manga and danmei fanbases because that's where a lot of my interests are now, and I don't have to deal with USAian nonsense as much. But now that 7 Seas has unfortunately decided to translate more danmei into English that's changed. A queer male fan of a popular series has been unfollowed en masse by danmei fans for saying wildly misogynistic things about the author. Everyone all week has been scrambling to figure out where this came from. "He only ever said these things about cishet white women," but you guys... he was always talking about us the whole time. Now, I just don't know. Now I see why men aren't generally welcomed in or are common within romance-genre circles. It's just really frustrating to see the same thing over and over again. I'll add on that the only genuinely cool queer men in fandom I've met have come from yuri circles. The ones who try to talk about BL are, from my experiences, generally misogynistic, toxic, and feel as though everything should center around them because they're men and in BL the characters are men, as well. But when other women don't want to form community with them, they scream about 'homophobia' and 'fetishizing gay men.' No, you're just an annoying, awful person to be around, and the queer male yuri fans didn't want to deal with you either. Has anyone else, or you specifically, dealt with this? Is there a way to become friends with more queer men in BL spaces who aren't... like That? Or are there specific things/patterns to look for as far as who to avoid?

--

God, so much of this sounds so familiar.

I've known a sad number of trans dudes who overcompensate in dickhead ways. A lot of them do calm down a few years into presenting publicly as male, but it's infuriating to see that crap even if it's temporary.

I will say that two of my close circle of offline friends are trans men, including one who came out during the time we've all been friends. The defensive tomfoolery is in no way inevitable. Both of these dudes are nonwhite and have experience in various other geeky and queer spaces beyond BL (gaming, drag queens, etc.). Maybe that broader perspective helped, or maybe they're just nicer and more mature people than a lot of the little jerkfaces I run across online.

TBH, I often have better luck in offline meetups because to show up at all, people have to be a little more comfortable with getting along with others and behaving themselves. It's also sometimes easier to detect the people you want to back away from slowly when you can see how they treat people in person.

One of my neighbors is a cis gay guy. White, able bodied, middle class, yadda yadda. Exactly the demographic you'd expect to be the worst in certain spaces. He and his partner have lots of queer friends, and plenty of them aren't fellow cis gay guys, which is basically my litmus test for non-annoying cis gay guys offline. (Toxic cis gay dude culture is its own kettle of fish with a different set of issues than defensive trans boy culture, but I've encountered it plenty too.)

This neighbor is interested in geikomi and was delighted to find out I'm a fellow nerd and eager for all my nonfiction book recs about queer Japanese stuff. We don't necessarily overlap in our manga tastes, but there's still a lot we do share. When I ramble on about how AFAB queer people and/or bisexuals study history that's presented as cis gay men's history because that's all we have for most historical periods, he's like "Yeah, that makes total sense!" and not "Mine and not yours!"

I think the key here is that this is a dude who is secure in his identity, who's getting both his media and queer community needs met, and who's in his 40s, so he has some god damn perspective and doesn't need to pretend BL is aimed at him.

A lot of the little jerkfaces make me think "Did your preschool teacher not teach you how to share your toys?"

--

To be honest, there seem to be plenty of dudes hanging around my tumblr. A few cis. Many trans. But they're not going to bring it up incessantly in some defensive "you know I'm not a cootie-having girl, right?" way because who does that?

It comes up when there's a discussion about trans shit or BL as #ownvoices or whatever. (And, in general, any dude worth hanging out with will not think BL as an industry is, or should be, anything of the sort—even if he's expressing his own sense of queerness by writing some.)

On the flipside, I have seen some pretty extreme "no boys allowed" clubhouse nonsense in fandom. It's less common than it was, and past shitty dudes have often been the inspiration, but it can still be a bit much. The nicer class of fandom dude is often pretty hesitant in certain spaces because he's expecting to be met with hostility and is trying to figure out how to participate without tromping all over everyone. (TBH, the guys worrying about this are rarely the problem, but you know how it is.)

I've had dudes send me private messages being like "this thing you said seems kind of stereotypical and anti-man", but in the adult capable of conversation way, not in the tantruming 5-year-old way. And we had a conversation, and they stuck around.

I think having a very clear "It's not #ownvoices, fuck off" stance deters a lot of the more pestilential set. Being equally clear that everyone is welcome and that male yuri fans and female BL fans are pretty equivalent makes the guys worth knowing come out of the woodwork.

In 99% of spaces, I do not give a fuck if some man has his precious feelings hurt by a double standard or default suspicion of men... But fandom is a little unusual because of the demographics and relative power here being so different from in most spaces.

I've definitely seen some people who think women liking BL are fine because we care about characters' personalities, while male fans are all predators or all write f/f that is just fetishy porn or m/m that sounds like Nifty.org and not other fanfic or whatever.

And, yeah, I'll shut down the dumbasses crying in my inbox because I made a joke about Nifty and "coke can dicks" (the kind of guys who have clearly never read m/m that's aimed at dudes outside of fandom spaces), but at the same time, we should extend a little benefit of the doubt to our fellow fandom members of whatever gender. There are usually plenty of men facepalming right along with me at these inexperienced young fools who cannot bear to share.

I think you're just running into the problem that the loud people whose identities you know are often using those identities to browbeat other fans on social media.

--

There are fewer men in BL spaces than women or nonbinary people, so one will typically end up knowing fewer men.

Honestly, I think you find the reasonable people and get rid of the unreasonable ones in the same way regardless of gender: Gatekeeping bullshit is a red flag. Very Online understandings of oppression are a red flag. Enthusiastic and clueless blanket endorsement of own voices as a concept is a red flag. Lots of talking about "fetishization" or even "appropriation" in a very online way is a massive red flag. Monetizing fanfic or seeing other pro authors as competition instead of peers is another. (Professional jealousy and fear about earning potential are behind a lot of bad behavior.)

A lot of it is down to whether you're willing to make yourself a target by publicly telling annoying people to fuck off.

If others can tell what you stand for, they can figure out if they want to hang out with you. Most people keep their heads down a lot of the time, so it can be hard to even hear of them, let alone know if they're your sort of person.

--

tl;dr – Be nice to nice men. Tell shitty men to take a hike. Making friends with men is really as simple as that.

There are larger issues here with what kinds of queer spaces exist and whom they prioritize and with toxic understandings of what representation even means and what should be demanded of whose art. But as you say, a lot of women are also promoting toxic-ass understandings of these things.

The bottom line is that we must resist social media clout-driven understandings of justice. The loudest assholes in the room are rarely worth listening to.

[rodolfoparras]

Palladium anon here again :3 tho if it's not taken could I be the 🌱 anon?

and yes absolutely horn play is hot, especially when the character is really sensitive with them. Teasing them and/or using them as handle bars when fucking them??? Extremely hot. I've seen some ppl want to like fuck the horn and in theory I understand but most horns are pointy😭 you're gonna scratch up your holes bestie be careful

Also sharing my winx, trix , specialist and some others sexuality headcanons because I have been hyperfixated on this forever and I'm so happy to find other queer ppl to talk to about it!!

Helia and Flora are definitely bi or pan, you can not convince me otherwise. I'd say they're poly curious maybe?? Despite the show having every single couple go through a jealousy arc🙄 I think Flora and Helia would definitely be open to dating someone else if they both liked them

Riven, Bloom and Stella are all bi with a male preference

Layla and Naboo are a bisexual power couple and I will die on this hill

Musa and Timmy are bi with a fem preference.

Brandom is straight, mandatory for every queer friend group is the one cishet guy that's just there.

Sky is questioning, having gay thoughts from living in the dorms with other men and seeing them shirtless

Now I'll probably get hate for it but I think Tecna as an aroace lesbian is neat. Like her and Timmy were cute ig but I like tecna better on her own outside a relationship. Also her struggling with feeling like a human and more robotic fits with the unfortunate stereotype aroace ppl get. Her arc reminds me of what my aroace brother went through

And as I mentioned before, Palladium is definitely a bisexual transmasc! Avalon and Valtor are gay

Icy is a mean lesbian Darcy is bi with male preference. Stormy isn't sure what exactly she is but definitely not straight.

You can def be 🌱 anon sugar!!

And yes I def agree that the most appropriate ways when it comes to hornplay(word?) is to use them as handle bars, fidgeting with them to rile up your partner or even licking and sucking also one thing idk if this is possible but like if they could make the horns vibrate by humming and have the sound travel through their body and up to their horns?🧎🏻‍♂️

I def agree that helia and flora are bi or pan! Especially helia I’m not trying to say that gay ppl have a look bc fuck stereotypes but…look at this man I wouldn’t even be surprised if helia went by he/ they

Also I can def see riven as bi. One thing I rmr disliking is how toxic his and musas relationships became I’m sorry but it was so silly to me even at that age 💀 like every other episode there was jealousy drama

Also I forgot about Naboo man he was so pretty!!! And I can def see both of them being bi!

SUGAR IM FUCKING SCREAMING BC TWLL WHY I KNEW WHO BRANDON WAS BEFORE EVEB SEARCHING IT UP MOST ANNOYIMG ASS STRAIGHT MAN

Also yes!! I 100% agre that sky is bi curios big buff dude crushes on another big buff dude

Also I really like your take on tecna! Tbh I rmr even as. Kid i could understand she did not want to be in a relationship 💀

Avalon and valtor are definitely old gays 🧎🏻‍♂️🧎🏻‍♂️

Also I like your take on the sisters! I don’t have much else to say bc lord knows they annoyed me in the show 😭

#alec answers #🌱 anon

[galaxywarp]

Hey, do you have any experience with inpatient (either for substance recovery or mental health)? I’d like to ask another trans person what their experience was like bc I dont think cis ppl would have a comparable experience. I think it would benefit me but I have a lot of anxiety around the whole idea of it

Yeah I’ve done inpatient treatment both for mental health and substance abuse/rehab. And I completely understand where you’re coming from — being transgender on top of the whole experience is definitely anxiety inducing, so. I hope I can say something that helps you out in some way

Ultimately I think it really depends on the rehab/hospital? Like, find out what their individual policies are on LGBT stuff and especially transgender patients. For me, I was lucky enough to be in a good hospital system that did stuff like weekly LGBT community meetings, and they made sure I had my own room and private bathroom. But I don’t know if that’ll be the case for facilities nearby you or that are covered by your insurance, so I think it’s worth calling ahead of time and asking some questions.

Your experience could also vary a lot depending on how well you pass. That’s an unfortunate reality, but it’s reality. For me, I haven’t had any trouble fitting in with other guys for a lot of years now, so besides having no roommate I didn’t need much else to stay “stealth”. But then, I knew a trans woman while I was in rehab who was pre-everything and faced some struggles because of it. Don’t get me wrong, she had a lot of friends and support too, but even innocent misgendering can rattle you pretty badly when you’re in a new scary institutionalized environment like that.

For me, I definitely started feeling some type of way about being constantly surrounded by cishet male energy. It wasn’t BAD, but it was relieving to go to my weekly LGBT meetings and just be around other queers for awhile and let my guard down you know. Let down my guard a little.

But. Yeah. I hope this was at least a little helpful? Call around and ask, for sure. See if you can’t find reviews of local rehabs and hospitals, ideally from an LGBT standpoint.

#recovery tag

[rollercoasterwords]

hello!

this is a little bit away from your last post but i think a lot of “hot take activism” has stemmed from oh they have a point! i’m going to drive this in further so i don’t look like a bad person!

even though some hot takes are subject to opinion

for example a lot of fan fiction writers have been slated for their E rating on mlm fanfiction and many of the critics are cishet women, whilst men in the fandom have taken no issue

now if a man were to take issue that’s entirely valid however a lot of people critique unprompted which then leads to a kind of mob mentality in a way where all of a sudden all explicit mlm fics are crucified and deemed fetishisation (even though no one had a problem before this one critique)

a friend of mine had written a fic that had been quite popular in a small fandom and was basically bullied until it was taken down even after he explained that he himself was a gay male

i’m all for calling out harmful issues when necessary: call a spade a spade

but i think sometimes people’s intention can be misconstrued and imo more harmful than the actual writing itself

(i’m on 2 hours of sleep and i have more to say! but i’m gonna keep this anonymous just in case i wake up and think “i didn’t mean to phrase it like that” although i think i got my general point across)

yeah i mean. i tend to think that most online discourse which takes nuanced issues and boils them down to one or two sentences is more about virtue signaling and performing morality for an audience than it is any sort of real activism, because flattening what should be a complex conversation does more harm than good. i don't necessarily think it's all ill-intentioned though, more just....people falling prey to the social media panopticon unfortunately

one thing i do wanna push back on a little though is that it seems like you're placing a lot of emphasis on the identity of the critics/people being critiqued, and that is part of what i'm trying to stay away from. like u say many of the critics are cishet women, but is that true? how do u know? do they all have "cishet" in their bios or something? like i'm not being sarcastic here and i'm not trying to be snippy, i am genuinely just like. asking u to reflect a bit on this point and get back to me. because part of what i said in my original post is that even if u are 100% sure about the way someone identifies, it still is not productive to treat identity as a fixed and static category. someone who identifies as a cishet woman could identify as something completely different the next day, and that's entirely valid imo

similarly, when u say "well it's different if a man takes issue with it," i just...do not necessarily think that's true. obviously it is important to take into account the ways in which someone's gender identity will affect their personal experiences and inform their critique, but i think the content of that critique matters more than the specific identity of the person making it, y'know?

like, i don't want to unfairly represent either side of this conversation. and if one side is people going "oh everyone writing these explicit mlm stories is cishet women!!" and the other side is going "oh everyone complaining about fetishization is cishet women!!" do u see how. both of those stances are operating from the same premise. and will therefore never be able to have a productive dialogue with each other. personally, my impression is that the majority of the people involved in this conversation on both sides are not, in fact, cishet women--at least in the marauders fandom. i'm not going to say that's 100% the case because it's impossible to do any sort of statistical analysis, especially given the fluid nature of identity. but do u see how the fact that we have different perceptions of who is actually talking about this makes a focus on identity in and of itself a bit of a non-starter for talking through the issue?

i do agree w u that mob mentality is a big part of this though, and what happened to your friend sucks + is definitely an example of the way this sort of policing around who can write what is ultimately going to hurt queer people more than it does anything to like. dismantle systemic homophobia. but i just wanna reiterate that the core of the issue to me is not so much "people are taking the conversation too far" as it is "the premise of this conversation seems to rely on an understanding of identity that is rooted in gender essentialism."

#interesting points ty 4 discussing w me anon! #think we agree for the most part but just wanna make sure that like #my core critique is coming across y’know #ask #ranting and raving

[party-gilmore]

Aaannnd with the influx of Twitter users also comes the beginning of Twitter bullshit.

Just got a suggested post in my dash of Obvious Plant Attempts To Garner Sympathy Via "Everyone Dogpiled On Me Because I Spoke Openly About Wishing I Hadnt Started HRT So Young, Here's Some Obvious TERF Dogwhstles About The Irreversible Effects Of HRT I Wish I'd Known And Why We Need To Advocate For Stricter Regulations On Allowing Youths Hormone Therapy."

NOW. Some people do genuinely detransition. Or retransition to something else. And they deserve our support no matter the reasons. It's all about Finding The Truest Them. So how do you recognize and the Obvious Plant while not accidentally turning your back on someone looking for real support? I'm not the best at explaining to others feel FREE to chime in here especially if you've more experience and/or eloquence please, but here are some things to help you weed out the garden:

ANY post with an end goal of "-NOT what i expected at all! And this is why we should have stronger restrictions on providing HRT/Surgical treatments." I GUARANTEE you, any person seeking gender affirming health care has been told REPEATEDLY what the possible side effects are. Over and over and over. It is HARD to get treatment. It's not some crazy hypothetical"they gave this to me so easily before i could make an informed choice and i regret it so much T.T" fentanyl in the Halloween candy kind of situation. On top of that, the MOST a minor is gonna get is puberty blockers. The post in question was a "21 yr old man on T for 5 years and now he looks like a 40 yr old dad 😥" Point me to a 16 yr old that got access to complete HRT and i will BEG you for their health care providers contact info i can't even get an appointment at PP to start TALKING about starting T at thirty.

ANY post who's main regret is "-and I'm ugly now." Re: the example above, the Plant Post was bemoaning their lack of youth and attractiveness and how their life was "ruined" now because of the "irreversible effects." 1) The effects of second puberty are about as irreversible and first puberty. Which is to say. The whole reason HRT works... is because... most of it *is* changeable. Your doctor will spell out which is which for you. The one this post was complaining about??? Balding. Male pattern balding. That's it. Beautifully clear skin, lovely face, but because of male pattern balding now their "ruined." They are actively playing on stereotypes of what is and isn't attractive to cishet women. That is terfy as fuck. No one actually detransitioning is doing it because they werent "as attractive as a _____ they thought they'd be." It's because something just intrinsically does not (or it did once but no longer) feel right in who they are. The idea anyone would go through that for something as shallow as being/not being "hot..." Wtf. 2) do you KNNNOOWWW??? how many of my 20's and early 30's transman friends and kinda me ??? Would KILLLLLLL TO LOOK LIKE A 40 YEAR OLD DAD????

ANY MENTION AT ALL OF "HOW TERRIBLE" IT IS THAT "QUEER SOCIETY" FORCING PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY KIDS, TO TRANSITION. NO ONE IS PUSHING TRANSITION ON KIDS. IT IS THE OPPOSITE PROBLEM. PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO STOP EVEN SOCIAL TRANSITION. PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FORCE KIDS TO DE-TRANSITION. THIS IS YOUR BIGGEST CLUE.

Of course we want to support other queer folk who, for whatever reason in their gender gender journey, destransition. Even if it's the right decision, it's a hard one, and will always be a struggle. And they'll need support. (And they are still queer! They lived and explored as a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth! They have been both now! Welcome to Cis Plus! Cis With Benefits! Their Journeys In Gender will always be queer ones and no one can take that away from them!!!)

Unfortunately, this is going to CONSTANTLY be co-opted by TERFs and other trans exclusionists trying to twist it into some kind of GOTCHA! to further restrict access to gender affirming care. And you NEED to keep eyes open for it, particularly now during the Twitter exodus.

#queer #terf dogwhistles #anti terf #detransitioning

[dreamhot]

I'm really glad that George stood up for himself and said he wouldn't acknowledge things from years ago. I myself have been playing minecraft for over 12 years and am around George's age, when I look back at the things I used to say in videos and recordings I took I find it shocking how easily me and my friends and the greater community said insensitive things. The server I used to play on for years had this massive culture of mocking and excluding the rather sizable minority of Arab players, and looking back at the things people said about it is just really sad. however I do believe that we can all grow and become better people, I'm just really glad George respects his own boundaries so much and doesn't let people push him around. I also don't think younger people understand how toxic gaming spaces were (still are), especially male dominated spaces. (sry if this is rambly)

i think there's a worthwhile conversation to be had here, namely in that we can acknowledge that this behaviour is unfortunately normalised in gaming spaces in particular all while highlighting how fucked up it is that we can almost hand-wave it as a result. it should never be the intention to act like it's okay simply bc it's common - there's something to be said for how a Lot of (often white cishet male, though not exclusively) people can effectively 'get away with' racism/misogyny/homophobia (et al) because it's the culture and/or it's considered a 'joke'/trash talk/etc in context

obviously those who show accountability and growth shouldn't have to be judged for the rest of their lives (tho if someone chooses not to forgive them, that's their prerogative ofc), but that doesn't mean it's any less sad to think about how common it is to see so many people who have this spotty history with language usage (or just . full on racism/discrimination, like the server you mentioned). it's part of the whole privilege parcel - it shouldn't HAVE to be normal that so many people had an 'edgy' past, and hopefully we'll be seeing less and less of that sort of thing as time goes on

#i'm not excluding myself here btw #like as a white person from a relatively rural province i've made some dumbass jokes in my youth #and it's fucking embarrassing to think about it #racism and racial stereotyping is so ingrained into white culture that even the most well meaning ppl can make awful jokes #ostensibly without meaning anything by it #but it doesn't make it any better yknow. #the only thing we can do is keep learning keep listening and stop trying to excuse bigotry with 'oh but i don't mean it like THAT' #'i'm not [insert bigotry here] i hate everyone equally!' <- spoken like someone who's never been discriminated against lol #smile.ask #anon #discourse cw #racism cw

[rainbeausobsessions]

Literally no one asked so I'm building my Sonic HC Library

Shadow

100% vibing with him being autistic

no wonder I must protec

Gives off he/they enby, but I also don't think he's thought much about it one way or the other, he just feels like he knows who he is and that's valid

Panromantic, may or may not be demisexual.

He has a type(tm) and it's Maria, I mean, the beaniest of beans, I mean, 'the gentle and hopeful and somehow still fully in love with the world despite being forced to face with the cruelest realities of it' type

(he'd probably hear silver's backstory and just suddenly fall madly in love because this bean is such a bean despite everything he's gone through)

(does this count as demiromantic (probably))

Bruh would feel so awkward with a crush but he'd probably seem mostly normal except to people who knew him pretty well (Rouge, and then she'd tease him for it), and he'd get so flustered if they ever tried to make a move on him like 'what are you doing' + internal panic

Looks like he's totally in control, but if he ever gets his own place it will be an absolute disaster cuz our boi don't know shit

Asking him for polyamory would probably result in "whatever, just spend time with me"

They'd probably get overprotective in physically dangerous situations tho

Sonic

Vibing with the transman fanon rn

I'd say he's on T if it wasn't for the fact that our boi couldn't stay in a single city to save his life

He has a type(tm) and it's Sally Acorn, uh I mean, 'the confident and self-assured but somehow still conscientious leader's type

(I can see him with some of the newer versions of Amy, considering her character growth so far)

(oh look, another demiromantic)

Man can't stick around long enough to keep a long term monogamous relationship tho, so he'd be a comet in a thousand different QPRs

Maybe he's relationship anarchist, idk but it makes sense

Definitely a solo poly guy tho. He's his own primary.

Silver

FEMBOY

My boi deserves all the love

Would probably come back from the future at some point and then just keep delaying going back to the future because all his friends are in the past and he's so lonely

(oh no, can't go back to the future, accidentally started a family in the past, whatever will I do *lives the rest of his life in happiness and adventure*)

is giving he/they/she

Espio

Transmasc goth boi

(I love him)

Seems like he's pretty stable and self-assured. Would probably be really polite and attentive as a partner. Would absolutely just ask his crush out on a date, cuz again, he's in a good place.

(and if he didn't he knows that Vector would stage an intervention for him)

Rouge the Bat

Ngl she's giving transfem/mtf vibes

Absolutely loves messing with people. Probably partly why it's so hard to pin down what her moral compass is, she *likes* keeping people guessing

Can't do that with Shadow tho, they may have even gotten in an argument about it at one point

She still loves him tho, Shadow's a found brother/sibling

Charmy Bee

Baby trans boy

I imagine his Big Brother(tm) Espio started sharing his experiences as a trans guy and Charmy was like "GASP, THAT'S ME!!"

(Someone pointed out to me that female honey bees have stingers and not males, so now it's headcanon)

Vector

Unfortunately I can't not see him as the token cishet guy in Sonic's friend group

Probably gets some loving flack about it ("when's your shell gonna crack, big guy" "you sure you don't wanna check out men? I met a really sweet guy at the bar the other day")

May have a reputation for adopting gays.

Might not suddenly be housing them, but he'd absolutely send random care packages

(is this why you're always in debt, buddy)

Definitely has bi wife energy (his wife being Vanilla (eventually))

(more to come, probably, eventually)

#sonic hcs #sth #im honestly open to any ship as long as it makes sense in my head #no character bashing in my house #no ship bashing in my house

[ilyuqi]

ill turn into the most exclusionary and hateful asshole if dream gets added to pride mcc this year on the basis of him being “lgbt”. i know it’s silly but it still feels like he’s taking away the spaces meant for actual queer people 😭 it’s the same with people adding him to lists meant to uplift marginalized identities, like “list of lgbt streamers to follow!” and all that. and same with drans acting like dream isn’t in the most privileged class known to earth (cishet rich white male) because he’s unlabeled and apparently oppressed now?? bitch he’s a spicy straight at best, calm down

like i know your sexuality label shouldn’t be based on the oppression you experienced but it still feels unfair, you know? especially when you come from a country where being queer is still criminalized. you mean to tell me this “unlabeled” dude is now apparently experiencing the same homophobia as I am and we’re all supposed to sympathize and include him in our spaces and discussions? die

i think this is where the main problem with the unlabeled label comes in. unfortunately, when you get into the specifics of it, saying that you don't identify with any label doesn't automatically permit you into queer spaces or allow you to be consdired lgbt. there's a huge difference from someone who knows they're attracted to the same sex and identifies with queer, but wishes not to label their sexuality, and someone who just simply doesn't want to label their sexuality. unlabeled and queer are not mutually exclusive. and i think a huge problem with harry styles and dream is that neither of them have clarified on their stance with relations to their own queerness, but still participate and use queer culture publicly.

dream has never said he's attracted to men, like. emkay_boo you blocked me on my damn personal private account but yes, i saw your "times dream has come out" and none of them actually.. say he likes men. being comfortable in your sexuality does not automatically mean you are queer. like, i'm comfortable in my sexuality as a lesbian, because i'm exclusively attracted to woman. simple. i can talk about how attractive i find men and dadada because i'm comfortable with my sexuality. this doesn't make me bi, and then we apply that logic to dream or harry styles, are they automatically bi just because they say they're comfortable in their sexuality? does that mean the men who joke about kissing guys in your ap government class automatically are gay because they're comfortable in their sexuality? apply this logic to real life and it simply doesn't hold up.

it's unfortunate, but right now "unlabeled" is simply not going to work as a label, or at least if that's how you label yourself, it's not going to be an immediate pass into queer culture and spaces. i know plenty of my friends who are girls and guys who say pretty confidently "eh, i don't care what people call me." i can't automatically assume they are lgbt, just if they don't label themselves using straight. labels are all about finding what you're comfortable with, and i think less and less people want to use "straight", so unlabeled kind of becomes. this safe haven for them. but like- we can't let people think not labeling your sexuality is an exclusively queer thing, otherwise- we're going to have a lot of non-queer people feeling entitled to spaces not meant for them.

#idk #lmk if i said anything wrong ofc #i hesitate when talking about this stuff but i feel like i made my point clear here

[stormblessed95]

Hi stromblessed95 hope you are doing good! I really like your blog😊.

I am just here to talk though about things that have been on my mind and I couldn't talk anywhere else, hope you don't mind.

Story time

You see I am new to BTS, over the last two years I have heard about them but I am not usually a type of person who is enthusiastic about trying new things so I didn't bother checking them but over last few months I have had a friend who is an army and I somehow started to take notice so we can have something to talk about. And tbh V is the first person that caught my eye, becoz obviously his features are well defined but others well they didn't match my idea of Korean beauty standards that somehow I created in my then. Here comes the frustrating part, I never in my 20 years of life found a male remotely interested in romantic or sexual way, to the point I think I started to question things. Maybe I am pan because looks are not what makes me interested in someone until I get to know them and I like their personality or I am an ace or maybe something else. But what I fell in love in my years are love people share, I love seeing to people being happy together be it romantic or platonic and it makes me happy they have people they can trust and relay on(as a person who doesn't have many, I can understand it's importance). And then enter BTS Jimin, he is enigma to me, in the beginning he didn't even catch my eye but as I got to know BTS, his personality caught my attention first and his androgynous features, everything about him fascinated me and drew me in. Now my friend who introduced me obviously caught on this that I am biased to him and the first thing she assumes is I want to somehow marry him? In the beginning I tried to talk about shipping and know her opinion, and she seems to be against it, that is fine, it is upto to her. But what pissed me off was her justification for that, "you can clearly see they are interested in girls why would you think they are in relationship with any of the boys". And being a person who is still questioning things or someone who can appreciate opposite gender being attractive without the feeling of wanting to be in relationship with them made me angry at her statement. And to be laughed off when I say to her that I am not a hardstan, because, NO them ripping off their shirt of flirting doesn't faze me. It made me sad that people won't understand my admiration for them doesn't stem from their appearance rather from their personality and I just want to be in their company without wanting to be involved with them romantically. That I can love a person of opposite gender without being in love with them.

Sorry for the long rant but now I feel better after talking about it somewhere and the anonymity helped. Hope you have a good day! Happy Hobi day😊

Hi, thanks for feeling comfortable enough to share your thoughts here. Sometimes finding the label that feels best to describe how we feel can be really hard. And when people can be casually dismissive of that, it makes it even harder. Unfortunately your friend seems to fall under the umbrella that a lot of cishet people do where thinking anything that isn't heteronormative is unusual and couldn't be her favs. I'm sorry that she isn't taking your feelings into consideration. Hopefully if you are able to explain it to her more, she is more understanding. In the end, I hope you find comfort in BTS and live life the best you can According to your own truths. Thanks again for sharing with us here. 🥰

[handsmotif]

The Queercoding of Pinky and the Brain

This originally was just me infodumping to my friends on discord, but I decided it might be interesting to some people on here, so I polished it up and made it an actual essay lmao

To start, we’re going to break this into 2 sections -- the relationship between the mice, and Pinky’s relationship with gender, because queercoding doesn’t just mean gay!

For a 90′s show, Pinky and the Brain (and its mother show, Animaniacs) was very progressive for its time! But there were still lots of things that they couldn’t slip by censors, and thus, that’s where we have to read between the lines. And that is something I wanted to clarify here before we dive in, the actual meaning of queercoding. It’s NOT the same as queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is when the people producing certain media purposefully dangle the possibility of queer representation to lure in audiences (most prominent examples are BBC Sherlock, Riverdale, and Supernatural I GUESS? who knows abt that last one anymore), but never follow through, purely for profit. Queercoding is when media producers WANT to write in queer representation, but can’t, usually because the censors won’t let them. So, they must resort to subtext. (example: the policemen from Gravity Falls) It could also be unintentional, simply assigning certain characteristics associated with the LGBT community to characters. (example: Bugs Bunny, many Disney villains) Either way, it heavily relies on the audience picking up subtext, but whether it’s malicious or not varies, depending on the media. Bugs Bunny is an example of positive accidental queercoding, while a lot of Disney villains are negative examples.

Now, to actually discuss the gay little mice! Pinky and the Brain, whether it be intentional or not (based off comments from Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, and Tom Ruegger, signs strongly point to intentional, but it’s never been explicitly confirmed), is an example of positive queercoding.

There are many moments that I could pick out to discuss here, but we’ll start with some VERY on the nose gay metaphors. 

Remember Romy? If you don’t, that’s their actual biological son! Romy came about due to a cloning accident, where their DNA got combined and spat him out. 

There’s SO many things I could say about Romy. Every appearance he makes has an overarching gay metaphor as the plot. His first appearance in the episode Brinky (yeah it’s literally titled their ship name), it deals with his dads (WHICH I ALSO WANT TO POINT OUT, he DOES call them both dad, and they do both call him their son) disapproving of the fact that he wants to leave home and not follow in their footsteps of taking over the world. Brain even goes as far as disowning him whenever he tells him, which is certainly something a lot of queer people can unfortunately relate to. Also seen a lot in this episode is Pinky and Brain arguing even more than a married couple than usual, which pushes Romy away even further. Later, when Romy eventually does leave, and Brain starts to regret chasing him away, he tries desperately to reach out to him, but Romy doesn’t want anything to do with him. They end up tracking him down to an apartment building, where Romy is now living with his human girlfriend. When questioned about their relationship, the girlfriend, named Bunny, goes off on a tangent about how people shouldn’t judge others based on labels or relationships (hello?), and that Brain needs to be more tolerant. Brain apologizes and Romy forgives him. Happy ending.

Romy’s only other appearance is in the comics. Essentially, the plot of this one is that Brain wants to become the president of the local high school’s PTA, but he needs Romy’s help to make it look like he has a normal home life. He also enlists the help of Billie, the obligatory Woman introduced to make sure Brain doesn’t look as gay as he actually is, that he has a crush on. She pretends to be his girlfriend, and Pinky pretends to be Romy’s uncle, while they make up the story that Romy’s actual mother was lost at sea. Because if the organization found out that Brain has a son with a MAN??? THINK of the controversy! Anyway, the plan works, and Brain actually manages to get elected as president. Throughout this though, Pinky gets WEIRDLY jealous that Brain keeps brushing him aside for Billie. To the point where during Brain’s inauguration, Pinky actually dresses up as the wife/mother lost at sea and storms into the room.

[ID: Comic panels of Pinky, Brain, and Romy on stage at the inauguration ceremony. Pinky busts into room wearing drag, saying, “Yoo hoo! I’m back from years lost at sea to be with my son and ungrateful husband! Narf!” He then hugs Romy, while glaring at Brain. He goes on to say, “I’ll stand by your side, even though you left me behind!” The people in the audience begin to question this, saying, “Oh great fuzzy bangs!”, “What’d she say?!”, “He deserted her to be with that other woman!”, “What kind of monster is he?!”. Brain then rips off Pinky’s wig and says, “This isn’t my wife! This isn’t even a woman! It’s my roommate, Pinky.” Pinky replies, “Well, yes... But Romy really is my son! Poit!” And Brain responds, “N-Nonsense! He’s my son!” More people in the audience angrily speak up, saying, “What’s that?”, “He lives with a guy who likes to dress up in women’s clothing and the both claim to be that kid’s father!”, “Grumble! Mutter!” /END ID]

Needless to say, this doesn’t end well for them. What we can conclude from this is that homophobia exists in the Pinky and the Brain universe, and our characters are directly affected by it.

Moving on, And-There-Was-Only-One-Bed is a pretty common occurrence with these two. Their cage is big, they have plenty of room for two beds, but? They choose to sleep together? Even in some times where this has been inconsistent and they DO have separate beds, they’re always RIGHT next to each other. (what if we put our minecraft beds together ❤😳)

I would like to mention the episode, You’ll Never Eat Food Pellets In This Town Again! This episode is interesting to say the least. Deals with a lot of the meta of the show. Anyway. In this episode, Brain has a nightmare that he’s in a loveless marriage with Billie. You know, the woman he’s supposed to have a crush on. In the end, he wakes up from the nightmare in the same bed as Pinky.

Speaking of female love interests, Pinky is seen having multiple relationships with characters of different species. Any time this is brought up by Brain, Pinky counters with Brain being too intolerant. An honorable mention with this is in Wakko’s Wish, when Pinky is with Pharfignewton, and Brain’s constant pestering about their relationship could be read as jealousy. Pinky needs a mousy date, after all!

Something else I would like to mention is in one episode (I forget what it’s called, I’ll try to look it up later and edit this), Brain is applying for a job. The employer asks Brain if he’s married, and Brain hesitates before saying he “has a roommate,” but that he’s occupied with his own things, which then cuts to a shot of Pinky applying lipstick.

Leading into part two of this essay, Pinky’s relationship with gender! Pinky has always been very gender nonconforming, and loves to wear dresses, do his makeup, and make himself look pretty. For the most part, this is played pretty straight, and not as a gag, like a lot of shows tend to do! It’s just a casual fact about him that he likes to present femininely sometimes.

This does play into their taking over the world plans pretty often, where Pinky wears drag, usually either to sneak into somewhere. Like in one of their earliest appearances on Animaniacs, Noah’s Lark, where they pose as a couple to board Noah’s, and I quote, “love boat.” After boarding, Noah says to himself, “Who am I to judge?” Okay. Yeah. Alright. Anyway.

I actually had less to say on this than I thought I did, but I wanted to make sure to emphasize that Pinky at the very least is coded as being Not Quite Cis, and that he’s played a key part in helping a lot of people watching the show figure out that they’re also Not Quite Cis. 

Wrapping this up because I’m hungry, but I want to throw in some more honorable mentions that I really do not see any type of cishet explanations for:

They literally go on a romantic date at a very fancy restaurant in Brain’s Night Off. This is played extremely casually, and the only remark from anyone that they receive is that they are “much smaller than the usual clients.”

Pinky, on at least one occasion, daydreams about him and Brain being a married couple, and wanting to be a housewife (the original malewife ❤)

There’s an issue in the comics where Pinky has a crush on another male mouse, and when Brain gets annoyed, Pinky reassures him that he thinks Brain is cute and quite the catch too

Brain attempting to kiss Pinky in the reboot??????

Brain actually did conquer the world once in the Halloween special, because Pinky made a deal with the devil for it, and thus Pinky got sent to hell! Brain actually went to hell and gave up the world to bring him back

Brain was extremely close to conquering the world once more in the Christmas special, but after reading what Pinky’s feelings for him were (nothing romantic, just Pinky basically just praising Brain for being so hardworking and an amazing mouse, and lamenting that he never gets anything for it), he gets so emotional that he sabotages himself and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas instead

TLDR; these mice are very queer and need therapy, and are probably the most heavily queercoded characters that I can think of in children’s media.

#animaniacs #pinky and the brain #patb #brinky #FLOPS ON THE FLOOR this took a long time to write

[mysticdragon3md3]

I too was excited to see why Ryuji is trending and... ;_;

People are comparing him to a sexual abuser, like Kamoshida? I mean, yeah he shouldn't have looked down Ann's shirt. That wasn't cool. And some of his comments about Ann's Panther costume when she first got it, were not in good taste. But is Twitter seriously saying that puts him on the same level as Kamoshida? KAMOSHIDA???????????? omfg... I just can't anymore, you guys...I just can't anymore... x_x

Just this past week, I watched an Anituber video essayist mention the ubiquitous female objectification in anime as "because you know anime is going to anime", and I felt so validated about sensing that the amount of female objectification in Japanese media has become pretty much expected, normalized, even in the most unnecessary, tiniest ways. I'm so tired of being gaslit about this. Yes, Japanese media in general has a problem with making sure to have close ups of girls' bodies being ogled and women being reduced to (romantic) prizes to be coveted. That beach scene in Persona 5 did panning close-up shots of the girls' swimsuits; not the guys'. All the dating options in Persona 5 are from the pool of female Confidants; not the guys. Because "guys as romantic prizes to be won? Feh, what a *riDIcUlOuS* concept!" I understand that sex sells, that traditionally female sexualization sells to a traditionally cishet male audience which is still presumed to be the largest demographic, and that the anime industry (and presumably other Japanese pop culture creation) is actually financially high risk with low financial rewards for most studios, so they have to desperately scrape for any advantage. (Though recently, the Japanese pop culture industries, like anime and videogames, have begun to realize that there is a cishet female market, large enough to cater to as well, by mainstreaming series like Touken Ranbu. And they've also even recently begun to recognize that catering to fujoshi is worth investing into mainstreaming the BL genre, even a little bit. Thus, we're starting to get more mainstream BL fanservice, through series like Free Iwatobi Swim Club, Yuri on Ice, and Classmates.) So it's kind of our fault, for incentivizing studios to mandate and ensure each thing they make contains female objectification. The audience's spending habits and the industries' presumptions of our wants/demographics, have made cheesecake fanservice and waifu bait the most reliable bet for most studios. We spend the most money on collecting waifu bait merch and gacha cards of waifu. We argue the most about who is the "best waifu" and show our allegiances by buying their merch. We have turned waifu and cheesecake fanservice of such waifu, into the most reliable financial returns on investment for studios. And with studios so constantly, precariously on the precipice of bankruptcy, we the audience, have incentivized the mandate of cheesecake fanservice (of women/girls), even at the cost of cohesive storytelling/characterization. I understand all that. Studios are desperate, and they need to stay afloat. They need to cling and scrape towards any advantage they can get. That's why I'm so tired of people saying we're just imagining things. Anime and videogames are mandating to insert female cheesecake fanservice for cishet males, even at the cost of cohesive characterization, story themes, and good writing.

This includes Persona 5 shoehorning Ryuji into being the horny audience surrogate, no matter how awkward, nonsensible, and misaligned it would skew his characterization and previous writing. This is why fans of Ryuji often say his more "perverted" actions in canon, simply feel like a case of bad writing. Those actions don't feel like him. They feel more like fulfilling the Japanese pop media "obligation" to objectify women, than aligned with his character, as set up so far. Because anime/games just *have* to provide a POV audience surrogate character for everyone to ogle the girls through. Or at least reinforce the types of reactions they want from their audience, after showing us all these T&A shots. It felt more like fulfilling anime tropes than further building upon Ryu's established character of defending people, including women, against perverts like Kamoshida. I mean, this is the guy who was chasing down Kamoshida's car because he knew that pervert might do something. This is the guy who ran straight to the faculty office to punch out Kamoshida for torturing Shiho to her tipping point. The guy who jumped in front of a moving cab to rescue Makoto. The guy who survived watching himself and his mom get abused by his dad. And you want us to believe he wouldn't think twice about looking down Ann's shirt on the way to Futaba's Palace? Or up Ann's skirt, when she laid down from a food coma, after they Yusuke's welcome-to-the-Phantom-Thieves meal? Or so eagerly coerce Ann into posing nude? o_O? Atlus wanted us to believe this was consistent characterization??? To the Atlus writers' credit, they did write Ryuji feeling too guilty about going through Project Maid-Watch and they wrote him ditching it at the last minute. But they also wrote AkiRen to look down Ann's shirt without any hesitations and they wrote morgana to also look up Ann's skirt when she laid down from food coma. The Atlus writers---and most Japanese pop culture---just seem to have an unwavering determination towards these female objectification scenes, and they just saddled Ryuji with it, because he's the "silly, rambunctious, comedy relief" character "that you won't have to feel bad when he inevitably gets hit with *slapstick* retribution". Nevermind, it's counter to the story's theme and his characterization, that they've driven pretty hard as being something to take seriously. So some Ryuji fans will just call-out his inconsistent characterization into being creepy towards girls, as "bad writing".

On the other hand, it's wholly possible and realistic for a guy to exist who is against all the sexual abuse, that scum like Kamoshida do, while still being a dumb horny teenager who will do dumb horny teenage boy stuff. (I'm sorry for all the toxic heteronormative presumptions. But that's kind of the archetype that Atlus has been trying to slot Ryuji into...unfortunately.) They grow out of it. Gradually learning to curb dumb horny inclinations, is _not_ the same level as a sexual abuser! Why are people conflating that today?! o~O????????

And from what I've seen of Ryuji in Persona 5 Scramble/Strikers so far, he has been growing out of it. There's a whole lot less creepy ogling coming from him (AKA the writers), even during scenes which any other anime would have. He didn't get creepy about the girls' yukata, he didn't strain to listen to the girls on the other side of the Sapporo onsen, he didn't make grabby hands at the girls' swimsuits again, etc. Any other anime---hell, even in the previous chronological episode of their story, in the original Persona 5---Ryuji and the camera would have been creepy about the girls' yukata, he would have shut up the other guys so he could listen to the girls compare boobs in the onsen, he would have tried to sneak a peek at the girls' onsen, and there would have been a repeat of that close up scene of the girls swimsuits, with Ryuji providing the expected lecherous audience reaction. But none of that happened in P5S. Heck, even if you choose the option to say onsen are great, as if to imply that overhearing the girls talk about their boobs is great, Ryuji gets embarrassed about the topic and immediately tries to change the subject. Watch any anime from the 2000s or earlier, and the goofy, masculine archetype, like Ryuji, would have not only agreed, but would have suggested sneaking a peek at the girls' onsen. I'm actually really surprised that the Kyoto onsen scene didn't result in fanservice, because that's usually what happens. Even in anime where the boys know to escape fast instead of sneaking a peep, there's usually a screw up where they'll Rube-Goldberg-trip into girls' boobs or trip into full-view of the girls without their towels. Any other anime or Japanese media would have done that. It's typical, expected. "Anime is gonna anime." And yet, none of that normalized perversion happened in that scene. Persona 5 Scramble/Strikers, including Ryuji, did a whole lot less "dumb horny teenage boy stuff", suggesting Ryuji was growing out of that with time. Because even if Ryuji can be a little bit of a "dumb horny teen", he still knows better than that, is curbing such inclinations, and is a much better person than to increasingly act on or nurture such inclinations.

Ryuji is a good boy. Please don't conflate him with Kamoshitty.

9:53 AM 9/17/2021 Ok. I found the original Tweet that started this shitstorm. https://twitter.com/HerielP48/status/1438677678400409607

But this Tweet isn't actually saying that Ryuji is the same as Kamoshida. I thought this Tweet was saying that the overall writing, using Ryuji as a mechanic for "pervert comedy" was a bad decision from Atlus's writers, especially since it contradicted the themes of the Kamoshida Palace story arc. I actually agree with that.

9:56 AM 9/17/2021 Oh, wait. There's a previous Tweet to that one: https://twitter.com/HerielP48/status/1438677262145101824

I see that you tried to save the first sentence, with your second sentence---which I agree with: I agree that the writing made an awful decision in having Ryuji or any character sexualize their female friends, after the sexual abuse they suffered. But your first sentence was still very strongly implying that Ryuji as a character is a problem, more than the writing injecting out-of-characterization into the character that they had already established with Ryuji thus far. That wording was just kindling waiting to start a firestorm. ~_~;

10:29 AM 9/17/2021

Well, the one good thing I'll say about Ryuji trending because of dumb, offensive reasons, is seeing the sheer avalanche of people jump to defend him. This wasn't something Ryuji got, early in the fandom! ;o; Remember when he was the most hated character in the fandom??? And now, everyone is overwhelmingly loving on Ryuji today! ;u;!!! Thank you guys. ;u; He is a good boy. ;U;

#toxic fandom #ryuji is a good boy #actually a happy ending #character analysis #out of character #writing #soooooantishuh #twitter is a hellsite #trending tags #trending #ryuji sakamoto #popular characters #popular #popularity #canon characterization #female representation #OOC #processing thoughts #rambling #tw #trigger warning

[comingoutofthecauldron]

let’s talk about lesbophobia in fandom

i don’t like to use the word “lesbophobia” unironically because of all the gross radfem terfy connotations, so i will clarify right off the bat that i am neither a terf nor an aphobe and that if you are i want you off my blog like, right now. unfortunately, the meaning of lesbophobia has been so warped by alt right lesbians that seeing it in an unironic context makes me, a lesbian, uncomfortable, which speaks volumes in itself. so to clarify, lesbophobia is essentially homophobia with a pinch of sexism thrown into the mix, and it’s running rampant in supposed safe spaces and, more relevantly, fandom. 

/i’d also like to clarify that i’m not only speaking on lesbophobia, but also the general disgust and disdain for all wlw in fandom, and am using it as a sort of umbrella term/

lesbophobia and disdain for wlw has been around forever, but whilst gay positivity, mlm and mlm ships have been steadily increasing in popularity within fandom over time, wlw and wlw ships have remained perpetual underdogs. why? because lesbophobia has become a fandom within itself. both in and outside of fandom, we see instances of casual lesbophobia every single day—from aggression towards wlw to something as simple and prevalent as the complete and utter lack of sapphic ships and characters in media. hatred of lesbians and wlw is practically a trend, and it’s seeping in through the cracks of fandoms who are already facing issues with minorities and marginalized groups (i.e. racism, ableism). if you honestly think that lesbophobia isn’t prevalent as hell in fandom right now, you’re either not a wlw, you’re not all that involved in fandom, or you’re dumb as shit. 

just look at ships. in almost every single fandom, the ratio of mlm ships to sapphic ships is ridiculously unbalanced. people are quick to ship male characters who so much as smile at each other (and i don’t condemn that) but would never do the same for two women—even on the rare occasion that the ship is actually canon. i once wrote a wlw fanfic for a [predominantly straight] fandom, and received messages like this gem:

on the flip side of that, if there is a sapphic ship in canon or fanon, it is often fetishized and sexualised to a disturbing degree. there will be double the amount of nsfw art and fics, and ninety percent of it will be derogatory and fetishized as hell. having been actively involved in several fandoms over the past few years (and currently a content creator in one), i’ve seen instances of all this hundreds of times. people go crazy for mlm ships, but the second you say you ship/prefer a wlw ship, there’s always someone at the ready with, “i think all ships are great!” or “it’s not a contest” or “i prefer [insert m/m or m/f ship] actually” or “they���re my brotp!/why can’t you just let them be friends?”. not only do lesbians and wlw not get to have any rep in media, any rep that they try to create for themselves in fandom just gets attacked or ruined. this is so detrimental not only to all wlw, but especially to younger wlw who will end up being indoctrinated into this belief that their sexuality is something dirty, something that can never be tender and sweet but rather something that deserves to be preyed upon. 

building on that, let’s talk about engagement. i run an instagram account (where i have a significantly bigger following) as well as this blog for my fandom, where i post the content i create (mainly text posts). when i first started creating content, i made a lot for a relatively unpopular wlw ship, in which both girls are canonically romantically involved with a dude—though one of them is canonically pan. their canonical m/f ships are both very popular, and i noticed that my engagement was dropping every time i posted them, so i eventually just stopped. it wasn’t even a conscious decision; i merely resigned myself to the fact that the fandom didn’t want to see sapphic ships, and some people would even go as far as to condemn them. for reference, my instagram posts get an average of about 500 likes per post (popular ones usually exceeding 1k), but when i post this ship, my engagement drops to about 250 likes. similarly, my tumblr text posts have an average of about 140 notes per post (popular ones usually reaching up to 750), but my wlw content rarely surpasses 100. this just feeds the cycle of wlw never getting rep: if, like me, content creators become disincentivised by the lack of engagement with their sapphic content, they’re more likely to stop making/posting it, leading to further lack of rep—and when new content creators try to rectify that, they face the same problems. 

and then, of course, there’s the treatment of actual wlw in fandom. my best example of this is when my friend and i made an anti account on instagram (the first instagram anti account in that fandom), our bio saying something like “salty and bitter lesbians being salty and bitter”, and received an onslaught of lesbophobic insults and threats from angry stans within hours. (tw: r*pe) one commenter even went as far as to tell us that they wanted us to get r*ped. as well as this, i’ve seen so many instances of people using slurs against lesbians in arguments/in anons, often for no apparent reason other than they feel that they have the right. when i first mentioned i was a lesbian on instagram, my account only had about 200 followers, and within a day i lost 20. i also lose followers whenever i post f/f ships, not quite to that extent but enough for it to be noticeable, on top of the aforementioned engagement dips. in the face of all this adversity, i think a lot of wlw turn to mlm ships because they’re the closest thing we have to actual rep, but when we do we get accused of fetishizing them by the same people who fetishize us. there’s an endless list of double standards that non-wlw have been upholding for years, and i can firmly say that i’m really fucking sick of it. because of our sexuality, we will never be allowed to enjoy something without someone labelling it or us as dirty or otherwise problematic, when to them, the only problematic thing about us is that we aren’t pleasing men. 

as i mentioned before, the lack of rep for wlw in media is appallingly consistent, and part of that stems from tokenism. in a lot of modern mainstream media, you’ll have one, maybe two lgbt characters, and nine times out of ten those characters are white cis male gays. of course, there are exceptions to this, but generally, that’s it. script writers and authors (especially cishets) seem to have this mentality of, “oh, well, we gave them one, that’s sure to be enough!”, which means that on the off chance you do get your gay rep, the likelihood of also receiving wlw or any other kind of rep becomes practically non-existant. this belief that all marginalized groups are the same and that one represents all is what leads to misrepresentation on top of lack of rep, which is what makes tokenism so dangerous. if you treat your only gay character badly, you are essentially treating every single gay person badly in that universe. so not only is lesbophobia and disdain for wlw harmful to sapphic women via their exclusion in media, it’s also harming those minorities who do get rep. when people try to defend lesbophobic source material, that’s when fandom starts to get toxic. the need for critical thinking has never been more apparent and it has also never been less appeased—and wlw are getting hit hard by it, as always.

finally, a pretty big driving factor of lesbophobia is, ironically, lesbians. my lesbian friends and i often joke that though everyone seems to hate us, no one hates lesbians more than lesbians do. though i’d say it’s most prevalent on tumblr, i see traces of it all over the internet. the growth of alt right lesbian movements is not only reinforcing hatred for lesbians, but also reinforcing hatred for bi and pan women. here you have these terrible lesbians using their platforms to express their disgust for bi/pan women, for aces and aros, for trans women/nb lesbians, and people see them and say, “gosh, lesbians are just awful.” and just like that, all of us are evil. occasionally, lesbian blogs that i follow get put on terf blocklists for no other reason than the fact that they have “lesbian” in their bio. and the lesbians that actually deserve to be on those blocklists? they’re too busy spewing misinformation about trans women and bi women to care, boosted up by their alt right friends in an ever-expanding movement. i’ve found that this heavily influences fandom on tumblr, lesbians often getting branded as “biphobic” when they hc a female character as a lesbian rather than bi or pan. this criticism of both lesbians and wlw by lesbians and non-wlw alike only ever allows lesbophobia to grow, both in and out of fandom. that said, lesbians aren’t to blame for their own discrimination; rather, many of us have been conditioned into subconsciously endorsing it after spending our entire lives hearing heterosexual platitudes about lesbians and sapphic relationships. homophobic cishets are and always have been the nexus of this oppression—the only difference is that now they can hide behind alt right lesbians.

one thing has been made apparent to me throughout my time in fandom, and that thing is that no one likes to see men “underrepresented”. people hate sapphic ships and lesbians so much because there is no room for men, and men Do Not Like That. so, like the worms that they are, they slither their way in, be it through fetishization or condemnation of wlw characters and ships, and they ruin whatever good things we have going for us. the thing about worms, though, is that they’re easy enough to crush if you’re wearing the right shoes.

so to all my bi/pan gals and lesbian pals: put on your doc martens, because we’ve got ourselves some lesbophobes to stomp on. 

#everyone say thank you hanna (@pinkseraphblades) for deciphering my rambling notes and helping me out with this #also want to say that my nb lesbians are not excluded from this!! i know i use the term 'wlw' a lot but i'd say it still applies to y'all #i could talk about this for days lmaoo #please rb #discourse #fandom discourse #lesbian discourse #wlw #lesbian #bisexual #yes grishaverse fandom i'm talking about you #grishaverse #soc #six of crows #tgt #the grisha trilogy #shadow and bone #and of course i was talking about my anti sjm account so #anti sjm #anti sarah j maas #anti acotar #cauldron rambles #didn't mean to take such an anti-worm stance i'm sorry worms #no worms were harmed in the making of this post #lesbophobes on the other hand... #important #ninej #lesbophobia

[ghoulie-gator]

CW: guns in image, mention of transphobic violence and the T-slur.

PSA: Dear cis friends, never out your trans friends without their explicit permission to do so. Also, ask their approval as to who you’re telling and how you’re telling them. 

That’s the tl;dr, below is a bigger, more extensive explanation of what I mean and what brought on this rant.  

So, the other day, a friend of mine told her boyfriend that I’m trans, despite me directly stating in the past that I am very uncomfortable with him knowing. He’s conservative, even by Russian standards, and he has something of a temper. This friend and I were very close, so I trusted that she wouldn’t do the thing she did. That said, I understand what led her to do so, though it by no means excuses her actions. 

She had been hiding my existence from him, because we are best friends and she tells me literally everything, and if he found out that she had a friend like that who (in his view) is male, he would likely cause a huge fight and maybe do something rash. So yeah, the pressures of cishet jealousy led my friend to out me as trans against my will. 

When she voice messaged me about this yesterday, she seemed very happy. She had solved a problem that was stressing her out, she wouldn’t have to hide her best friend from her boyfriend anymore. She seemed very surprised when in my voice messages in response, I was crying and cursing, clearly in the middle of a full-on breakdown. She genuinely didn’t realize it was this big of a deal. 

So, cis friends and allies who are wondering why outing someone is a big deal, here’s a quick list:

1) Safety. The first and foremost reason closeted queer people stay in the closet is a feeling of being in danger when you are percieved as queer in public. Depending on the country you live in and the person you’re telling, you could be putting your trans friends in real danger by outing them. Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and other countries with a widespread culture of queerphobia have a great deal of literal lynchings of queer people that the police and public do not care to do anything about. Furthermore, even if someone does not face physical violence as a result of their being outed, they could be ostracized from their communities and sources of economic support. In my specific case, I feel that as long as this couple is together, I’m fine on this front, because he will not want to hurt someone she cares about. If something changed, if he had a reason to want to hurt the people around her, he could very easily doxx me and out me to my family, at which point I expect I would be kicked out or put in conversion therapy. He knows both my deadname and my preferred name, and he’s seen my profile on facebook and VK, and he knows the mutual acquaintances that I share with my friend. So to reiterate, when outing a queer person, you are giving someone the power to ruin that queer person’s life. You may trust this person immensely and think they would never do that, but that’s not for you to decide. 

2) Comfort. Even if it turns out that outing someone didn’t cause them direct harm, it will still definitely be a big source of anxiety. Where I live, the vast majority of people think that trans people are degenerate, mentally ill, disgusting perverts. I imagine this is unfortunately the case for most places on earth right now. This means that I do a great deal of testing someone’s opinions on queer issues before I come out to them, because if I don’t, I will just have one more person out there who thinks of me as subhuman. “But why should you care what other people think? Just relax.” Right. Yeah. Anyone who says this doesn’t know how exhausting and grating it is to know that there are people out there who think of you in this way. Furthermore, when those are people who constantly talk to the ones you love, it’s a massive source of paranoia. Is the transphobe influencing my loved ones? Are my loved ones misgendering me and awkwardly nodding along when I’m brought up by/around that person? I can’t know. I’d like to say I know my friends are above that, but I can’t assume that anymore, because apparently things that are obvious to me can’t be obvious to my cis friends and have to be spelled out. 

3) Freedom, Boundaries and Trust. When you out someone without their consent, they are going to feel betrayed. That is inevitable. Outing someone in that way is a statement. It states that you did not respect their autonomy on this issue. It states that you were willing to make this major decision for them. Whether you did it because you think you knew best, or because you didn’t think it’s a big deal, or because you were prioritizing the ways in which it would benefit you, it does not matter. Outing someone means not recognizing their autonomy and experiences. Outing someone means taking control of their life in a way that betrays and abuses the trust they placed in you. If you value someone’s trust, don’t out them without their permission. Respect their decisions. The person who did this to me matters to me alot and I love them, she was one of my two dearest friends, but I really cannot decide now whether I am comfortable staying friends with her or not. I’ll have to see what I settle on after my emotions die down, but even if we stay friends, I doubt we will be the same. 

Now, all of that said, I’m not saying that if you’ve outed someone, you’re malicious and meant to hurt them. Mistakes happen. That said, it is now on you to do what you can to fix the issue. You’ve dug this hole, now lie in it. 

“What do I do if I already fucked up?”

1) Apologize. Tell your friend what happened. Tell them you understand that you messed up. Tell them you understand if they want distance from you right now, whether that is temporary or permanent. Don’t make it about yourself. Don’t make excuses. Give your reasoning if they ask for it, but know that it doesn’t excuse you unless the person you hurt tells you it does.

2) Damage control. You can’t expect your trans friend to do the work of fixing the situation. Do whatever you can to prevent negative consequences for the person you hurt, and make sure that throughout the entire time you’re doing this, the person who you outed is aware of your ideas and approves of them. The things you should do depend heavily on your specific situation and on what your friend is comfortable with. 

            2.1)Can you pull over the person you’ve outed them to, and make that person start subscribing to progressive gender theory? DO that. Research arguments for trans and nonbinary validity, run them by your friend. Some queer people will want to help you make arguments or even have the conversation themselves, others will want to have nothing to do with this and you’ll be on your own. Either way, if you’re trying to change someone’s mind, run your arguments by as many queer people as you can reach to ensure that your arguments are effective and non-harmful. Ideally, get your arguments from queer sources in the first place. 

          2.2) If changing their mind is out of the question, at least make your stance known to the person you’ve outed your friend to. You are most likely not putting yourself in danger when you say you respect queer identity and will not tolerate queerphobia, but this goes a long way towards making your queer friends feel safe and comfortable around you again. If the person in question cannot bring up the queer people in your life outside of a queerphobic context, tell them to not talk about those people at all. Be stern, be clear. Don’t be wishy-washy or try to make both sides happy with you, because at best, that means awkwardly saying “ahahaha that’s funny but maybe you shouldnt say that” when people call me a ‘gross tr*nny’ in your presence. 

        2.3) If your actions have caused genuine danger for the person you outed, provide material support. Make sure they can find a place to stay where they feel safe and assist them in any way you can. Get them out of danger and into a situation where they can survive on their own. They may want your help, or they may reject it. If they reject it, trust their judgement, but make it clear that you will help should an emergency come up. 

That’s it for that, sorry about the long and dark post y’all. Just had to get this off my chest. If you’re queer, please show this post or explain this concept to your cishet friends, it’s not as obvious to them as you might think it is. If you’re cishet but understand and respect this idea already, please don’t take this post personally or feel called out. There are genuinely good cishet allies who make our lives easier, and I appreciate those people alot. Thank you, love you all, the happier memes will resume shortly <3 </p>

#trans #PSA #queer #allies #outing #long post cw #negative cw

[plounce]

do u have any reccomendations for how to read only comics involving rictor and shatterstar?? i used to be into marvel comics so i am immune to the usual comic shenanigans but i would like to learn more about these boys

here is a guide to reading xmen comics for rictor and shatterstar, my favorite canon comics couple! they were the first on-panel gay kiss in a marvel comic! they’re very special to me!

OKAY SO... ok. for anyone else using this, here’s a standard disclaimer that obviously there’s gonna be a lot in these that just absolutely sucks because 1. the 90s, 2. comics are an extremely cishet white male dominated industry. i do not vouch for everything written in these comics, but i think the gaycoding that eventually gets canonized is worth wading through a lot of stupid bullshit and very ugly art.

quick backstory on these two: rictor is a mexican teenager who was kidnapped by an anti-mutant terrorist group and was rescued by x-factor (the original 5). he hung around their auxiliary teen group the x-terminators for most of x-factor, being a delightful little punk (wearing a sleeveless leather vest a lot of the time!) and hanging out with boom-boom (who i love) and then got put into the new mutants for a very short time (where he had a thing with rahne/wolfsbane), before it was dissolved and transformed into x-force when rob liefeld took over the title. rictor hates team leader 90sdude cable because he thinks cable killed his dad in front of him. he tends to be the snarky asshole on the team.

the first part of this article has a lot of little rictor moments i’m not covering here. if you want the full rictor experience, check out x-factor (1986) and !x-terminators! x-factor starts very slowly but it picks up and improves when the simonsons take the helm.

rictor left the team. shatterstar was introduced by liefeld - he’s an Emotionless Warrior Guy Who Loves To Fight from mojoworld (a planet run by a despot who produces tv. it’s Commentary), where he was forced to be a gladiator from birth and doesn’t know a lot of earth customs and doesn’t have emotions (or rather, he represses them). 

x-force (1991) feel free to read through all of it, but in case you just want to skip to these two, all of these issues have one or two good little Moments - just do some skimming. i tend to focus more on rictor than star in this era because star is made more interesting than Emotionless Warrior Guy by butting up against rictor:

13-16 (rictor rejoins his old new mutants friends)

19, 21-26 (the first phase of their relationship where they don’t really get along. in one of these issues rictor stares at star’s ass. big moment of star being autism-coded in here too)

29-30 (rictor drives shatterstar around and they seem to get along better, you get to learn a bit about star’s past, adam-x the x-treme is there)

32-33 (just some little moments of them hanging out, a couple good rictor lines)

34 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor backstory issue! AND this has the first big Subtext moment: shatterstar reveals he learned spanish from tv so he and rictor can have “conversations of a highly -- personal nature” HELLO?)

35 (some little moments where you can see star and rictor are now Friends and star is affected by that friendship)

39-40 (more good friendship - rictor asks if star has been watching dating shows and they just seem close. rictor also has gotten a haircut! we learn shatterstar’s mojoworld designation! they ride some motorcycles!)

43 (VERY IMPORTANT - the two go to a club. rictor tells star he’s a virgin then asks him if he has a dick. i am not kidding this literally happens. star learns what sexual attraction feels like and says ‘i don’t know what emotions im supposed to attach to that’, and rictor tells him he’ll help him learn.)

44 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor leaves the team because he doesn’t want to have the team communicate telepathically (VERY interesting for a character who is eventually revealed to have been a closeted gay man). shatterstar begs him not to leave - “you’re my best and only friend.” rictor tells him that if he ever needs him, he’ll come back.)

cable (1993) #22 (follows up directly on rictor leaving the team - star accompanies rictor to the airport and has a lot of Feelings and has great hair. “julio. one last time. please, change your mind. what am i going to do without you?” oh so you’re dependent on your best friend who you’re in love with? oh?)

45, 47-48 (star’s weird biology, star brings up rictor as his emotional touchstone in a situation where he isn’t relevant at all. also, a plotline where tabby gets treated terribly by her friends and the narrative!)

49 (VERY IMPORTANT - star wanders around at night wondering why rictor hasn’t contacted him yet. he goes to the club he and rictor went to in #43 and turns down a girl who hits on him. he thinks “i miss julio...” (in an earlier issue, rictor tells cable not to call him by his first name - “only my mom calls me that”), then beats up some homophobes in an alley. I AM NOT KIDDING.)

51-52 (51 has more weird star biology. 52 has two pages of star and james talking that is a nice look at star’s developing emotional state - the rest of 52 is a fight with one of marvel’s extremely fatphobic villains, just a warning to skip the rest of it. although the letter page of 52 has someone go HEY ARE RICTOR AND SHATTERSTAR IN LOVE? thank you roeland looman from the netherlands)

54-56 (the start of shatterstar’s weird bad benjamin russell backstory that is quickly forgotten, disregarded, and uncared about by everybody. BUT in 54, there is some extremely loud subtext where star’s feelings for rictor are explicitly compared to a het romance subplot!)

58 (star is very chill and flamboyant for like two pages, it’s great)

59-61 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor returns because star Needs him in the midst of his identity crisis!! it’s so joyful and sweet for them both, and the subtext is so LOUD here - there’s just. so much going on, i won’t describe it all, but it’s very good content and their emotionally intimate relationship is very apparent - really excellent gaycoding. the weird shatterstar backstory wraps up circuitously and to no great effect, but the art in the last issue is very nice, and rictor’s plain and uncomplicated concern for star is great.)

63-65 (some little moments - shatterstar and rictor time travel and beat up some nazis, star has a lovely conversation with siryn,)

x-force/cable ‘97 (the team goes to asgard! the important thing is that star says some goofy “ah... warriors...” things, and then rictor teases star for liking delivery pizza. it’s very charming)

67 (they hang out with tabby in a van. shatterstar has pigtails!)

70 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor and shatterstar exit the team together to go take down rictor’s crime family in mexico! they seem very devoted to each other. shatterstar’s hair is all the way down!)

post leaving x-force:

76 (VERY IMPORTANT - ricstar return for one issue - rictor gets held captive to force shatterstar to fight domino!)

x-force annual 1999 (VERY IMPORTANT - ricstar get their own story about what they’re doing in mexico! shatterstar has an ugly little goatee, but rictor looks great! they choose to share a room rather than sleep separately and then it kind of feels like they shared a bed! rictor has learned star’s alien language! they genuinely just seem so close and comfortable with each other, it’s incredible.) (if you’re using RTO, it’s within the rest of xforce’s issues)

they’re both in comics limbo for the first half of the 00s besides a couple random flavorless appearances. shatterstar at some point goes back to mojoworld to help with the war against mojo. then we hit peter david’s x-factor run in 2006, known as x-factor investigations (xfi). this directly follows the “house of m” event - what matters is that the vast majority of mutants have been depowered by the scarlet witch. rictor is one of them.

rictor is a main character of the team from the first issue (the series opens with him about to attempt suicide), so if you wanna read the run you can start from the beginning. x-factor is... well, there are worse-written comics. it’s an okay read, but i find PAD’s writing insufferable a lot of the time (he writes multiple man as a pretty blatant self insert, and literally every girl on the team wants to fuck him at some point or another). i read the whole thing and it’s decent comics, but you might want to skip to the ricstar.

PAD canonizes ricstar, which is great! but unfortunately: 1. he writes star as  “slutty bisexual just can’t stop wanting to fuck people besides his partner who is uncomfortable with that!”, which is biphobic and sucks hugely, especially since it feels so different from xforce original shatterstar (see this post). rictor also just seems so annoyed with him all the time, which also sucks - they’re best friends!! let rictor like his boyfriend!!

anyway. if you choose not to read all of xfi, here are the ricstar highlights:

first issue of xfi for rictor's horrible mental state after m-day

14 (jamie implies that star would be jealous of rictor hanging out with quicksilver)

43, 45, 49 (star reappears!! he’s mindcontrolled, but it gets fixed, and he and rictor have the first ever on panel gay kiss at marvel!! yaaaay!! then they talk about their relationship a little)

after issue #50 it changes the numbering, so if you’re using RCO youll have to go to xfactor (1986) #200 to continue

200 (SHATTERSTAR FIGHTS THE THING!)

continue to read between here for star apparently being unable to stop kissing people. sigh. star sleeps with adult layla, which... sigh. whatever

207-208 (rictor and shatterstar semi-resolve the stupid biphobic plotline, resolve to work on their relationship, rahne discovers them (she and rictor had been sleeping together earlier in xfi), rahne is pregnant and homophobic, rahne and star fight, star is a delightful bitch)

209 (shatterstar on a pirate ship. that's it)

210 (rictor confirms that he is gay and it wasn’t legit when he’s been with women. there’s a moment where it's like "oh star makes rictor laugh" which is epic)

211-212 (star is said to be frustrated about rictor and rahne, rahne’s baby’s actual dad is revealed)

213 (rictor and rahne mostly resolve their shit)

216 (star and monet hang out, star thinks monet tells him to pee on rictor, spiderman is there)

217 (there’s a joke about the longstanding theory that longshot and star are related, monet is revealed as muslim in a very dumb way)

220 (star and rahne have a pretty nice conversation about their relationships to rictor and rahne’s faith. rictor does an offscreen internalized homophobia)

221 (star and rahne continue to hang out but it’s not as good as the previous issue.)

222 (oh my god, rictor cares about shatterstar being hurt! rahne owns up to how she kind of treated rictor like shit!)

pop over to avengers: the children’s crusade (a young avengers miniseries with good ol’ billy/teddy and i like it! but if you don’t want to read the whole thing - rictor and shatterstar appear in #6, and rictor is the first mutant to be repowered! they’re more tender with each other over their five page appearance than they are in xfi, so it’s a balm)

225-226 (PAD decides the first thing rictor does with his powers is be a scab [DEEP SIGH], rictor and shatterstar discuss rictor getting his powers back, the biphobic plotline is resolved again kind of in a very PAD-y way)

235-236 (shatterstar gets to be the main character of a mini arc. fights a mojo guy)

238 (ricstar go with rahne to help her find her son)

242 (they find her son. not as important imo)

248 (oh my god... they joke together :) they like being around each other :) also shatterstar goodboy moment. then in 249 rictor’s life is spared bc of shatterstar’s goodboy moment)

259 (SHATTERSTAR’S CRAZY CONVOLUTED BACKSTORY THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS TO HIS CHARACTER! YAHOO! and star has a cute little bob)

after xfi wraps up, there’s a couple years of limbo before they appear in secret warriors (2017) #2-3 (end of #2 and most of #3), which is a big crossover event or something. i don’t know, it’s an inhumans comic, and as an xmen person i am contractually obligated to roll my eyes at the inhumans. ricstar both have mustaches, star doesn’t speak, and rictor has the ugliest costume ever (green tracksuit with no socks??) (tabby also has a terrible costume). it’s just more inhumans trying to be a match to the xmen and utterly failing to not look & act like total jackasses (except, of course, for kamala and moon girl). rictor’s jokes that daisy johnson should get more original powers (she also has seismic powers - rictor predates her!), and then daisy blows up the xmen’s jet. while it’s in the air. this is a very neat summary of most mutant-inhuman relations.

now we enter the current era of “on again off again” relationship limbo.

rictor appears next in iceman (2017). in #9 he states that he and star have apparently broken up offscreen! and then he hits on bobby! sina grace is a cool person but this writing decision is so... aghhh. the next issue he and bobby go out on a date and he’s immediately like “yeah i only have my eyes on star”, so it seems to be more “it’s complicated” than “we’re broken up for good.” he sticks around to help out with a mission in #10-11.

they’re on again in new mutants: dead souls, where rictor is a part of the team and he’s hilarious and has so many great lines! shatterstar also makes a couple cameos throughout and they’re all super sweet! they seem very domestic and comfortable and happy, i love their dynamic in this. my favorite shatterstar panel ever is in #6, where he is making rictor pancakes and is only wearing an apron. please ignore all the big plot things that happen at the end of this, especially everything with karma. they are stupid, dumb, and do not matter.

related to nm:ds, rictor appears in multiple man #1 as part of that team and looks very very cute. and he isn’t whitewashed like in nm:ds!

off again in the shatterstar (2018) miniseries. i have a lot of mixed feelings about this because i LOVE all the rictor stuff, the first issue codes shatterstar as autistic in a very characterful way, it doesn’t whitewash rictor for once, and the covers are GORGEOUS! but it also attempts to retcon a ton of star’s emotional backstory AND arc set out in xforce, casting a black woman as his emotionally manipulative ex. also star is a landlord (ew). my advice with this one is to treat all the flashbacks as not-really-canon since they suck.

star appears in extermination (2018) #3-4 and gets mind-controlled into trying to kill the time-displaced teen o5 (timetraveling baby cable is trying to put them back where they came from), and the art looks great and i feel really bad for him. rictor makes a follow-up cameo in uncanny x-men (2019) #9-10, where you can see that he’s at the school in order to visit shatterstar since he’s with cecelia reyes. he then goes to fight nate grey/x-man, where he gets sucked into the age of x-man pocket universe/event.

around half the xmen get trapped and brainwashed in that pocket universe where there is no love or family, merely friendship and comradery (it’s an attempt by nate grey to ‘fix’ the xmen by getting rid of all the soap opera stuff - it’s a bit meta wrt how xmen are the soap opera superheroes). there are a couple different titles for this event: rictor appears in age of x-man: x-tremists #4-5. people have mixed feelings about this title due to the gay characters (northstar and iceman) enforcing no-romance laws that very intentionally parallel anti-gay laws from real life, but rictor is just chilling and running an illegal romance movies theatre, and then he gets drunk and then starts a riot and he’s just delightful in this.

everyone outside of the pocket universe thinks everyone who disappeared was killed. shatterstar is part of the team in x-force (2019) (there are two 2019 x-forces: this is vol 5, written by ed brisson) who are trying to track down young cable (baby cable, or “bable”), who killed older cable, who formed good old 90s xforce. boom-boom is the best part of this entire run, hands down. the art is expressive and interesting but i Hate how they draw warpath (the one time he’s free from comic book limbo!). shatterstar is in full “i only like fighting please let me fight i am a difficult asshole” mode, and talks about grieving rictor in #7 and #10. this is never really resolved since age of x-man is thrown over for hoxpox (BIG status quo changes & current era of xmen comics), but aside from my little ricstar heart i can’t really mind.

rictor is currently appearing as part of the team in excalibur (2019), and has been very... cozy... with apocalypse. at the time of writing (halloween 2020), it’s very heavily ambiguous what exactly their relationship is besides “intense” and i still have no clue what to think about it. he and star have been stated by the writer to be exes, but i also know tini howard is a ricstar fan so im holding out for good things! and it’s cool that rictor is getting a ton of focus and a lot of powering up. i remember reading xfi #1 and being amazed at how rictor described how soul-deep his earth powers were and wanting more of that, and excalibur has that for him in spades. (i am still withholding a lot of judgment wrt rictor’s writing in excalibur until i see how things pan out)

after reading to excalibur #12, switch over to x-factor (2020). read the first three issues because i love northstar and prodigy and rachel. please ignore a couple cringe comments towards poor daken. shatterstar appears in #3, trapped on mojoworld, getting traumatized, and breaking my heart as i write this. that last data page... free my boy!!!!

after x-factor #3, read x of swords: creation. more rictor and apocalypse being Close. after that, read x-factor #4 for apocalypse being very Attached to rictor, and then rictor looking very good and freshly resurrected. then continue reading excalibur. in may, x-factor is going back to mojoworld!!

that’s all there is so far! i think within the next year there will be even more content for us, and im very eager to get to that content. i will update this post as things come out.

#ricstar #xmen #rictor #shatterstar #julio richter #chirps #anonymous

[gothwarlocks]

17. How were you introduced to the fandom? 25. What type of ship would you fly? and 30. Do you have any headcanons (was thinking of how you've talked about the underground scene in SW but this can be about anything)?

thank you Raven!! 🖤🥰

Placing under a cut bc I ended up rambling a lot! It’s a long post.

17. How were you introduced to the fandom?

I didn’t actively participate in any true Star Wars fandom for a while, actually. When SWTOR launched in 2011 I was about 16 and hadn’t had great interactions with SW fans since the majority I bumped into were gatekeepy cishet men, and being a closeted gay trans kid... lol, you get it. I mostly just chatted with irl friends about stuff I was excited about. And also, the fandom wasn’t really established too well on here yet, so there’s that. I would peek around tumblr occasionally but short of a couple people chatting about it or posting fanart there wasn’t a sense of community yet (at least, from what I saw).

In 2010 though, idk If anyone will know about this at all but if you ever heard of Clone Wars Adventures I was very very present there haha. I interacted with mostly other teens or the occasional chill adult that was there for some reason (this was a very...kid-oriented online game). I was hounded a lot by other players bc I would always be top 5 on the leaderboards for a couple of the silly little minigames :) it was really fun, actually! I would log on and since you can see peoples’ online/offline status, I would get messages within minutes from players wanting to challenge me to a 1v1 of some sort lol. There was also instanced housing, and there was more free reign on building stuff, so people got really creative. I myself built a functioning cantina/music venue on the roof of my Coruscant apartment (which should not have been reach-able lol) that was sometimes used for group chilling.

If anyone ever is interested, look up some videos. The things players would build and boundary-break to do is very cool lol. Once SWTOR launched though, players that had formed friend groups or guilds just migrated there. It was interesting to see!

25. What type of ship would you fly?

HMMM there are so many ships around in the EU lol. Almost too hard to narrow it down... When I was a kid I was obsessed with A-wings, X-wings, and Naboo starfighters. From SWTOR, I think my favorite ship is either the Phantom, for it’s sleek and elegent design, or the smuggler’s freighter, for it’s cozy and communal atmosphere.

30. Do you have any headcanons?

Oh yeah!! Like you mentioned I do love thinking about subcultures in the galaxy and expanding on that, but here’s a few for SWTOR and EU(?) that I enjoy:

(Sorry in advance for how many run-on sentences there are and if anything just sounds harebrained lol. CW for talk of transition, I suppose!)

Dathomirian Zabraks in the Old Republic Era... I just accept that their witchy culture(s) have existed for millennia, but were just very isolationist and did their best to remain undetected from the rest of the galaxy--different groups could have had other policies though. The group portrayed in CW could be maybe the last group to survive, or something like that (since in Jedi Order it’s presented like that, right?). Anywho, as a matriarchal culture that unfortunately enslaves Zabrak men, I think they would have a unique take on gender. I think trans women/trans feminine people would be wholly embraced and exalted as having “ascended” out of the male lower caste for discovering who they really are, and trans men/trans masculine people would be, well, not so cherished(?) having--and I say this as a trans man--“lowered” or “belittled” themselves. The witches can change/enhance body shape through magic, as seen with Maul and Savage. So I imagine they would help trans people that want to physically transition to help fit them into the social roles they were always meant to have, and beyond that there isn’t much to blink at. I headcanon Lorn still has the skin pigmentation of a Datho witch (and he retains some of their powers), but his tattoos are given to him by fellow Zabrak men and his horns and other body characteristics are given to him through witch rituals. And as for non-binary Dathomirian people, I would hope they just have the choice to belong to either the witch clans or Zabrak tribes. I’d love to hear a non-binary person’s take on this, to be honest 👀

Rattataki should have little to no sexual dimorphism, and they could stand to look more...alien. (Plus, they desperately need lore-building.) I just think of all the species they could have done this for out of the game, this one could have been it.

I also just absorb and adopt a lot of HC’s I see going around for all sorts of stuff, here’s a few of my fav that aren’t my own:

Twi’leks having headgear designed for trans or gnc twi’leks to help them express themselves. Also lekku accessories in general are very cute and fun to think about.

Cathar behaving a little bit feline... In cute ways :)

Togruta with sharp teeth and montrals that can grow into all sorts of forms!

Sith Purebloods having black sclera and pointed ears is a pipe dream of mine but it’s cool if they don’t given their integration with Humans.

#long post #ty again!!! I got to word-vomit for a bit lol

[my-darling-boy]

SO I’ve been getting people in my inbox asking me if I could explain the struggles of being trans. Obviously I’m willing to educate but there’s a LOT to unpack on understanding that, so to narrow it down, I’ll list things I or some trans people close to me have gone through to give you an idea of the difficulties. I obviously don’t speak for all trans people but as a trans man myself, I have Been Through Some Things

//Rape mention, self harm mention, suicide mention//

•When I came out at 14, I lost all my friends aside from one. I was bullied extensively behind my back. I was dragged to church by my friends who wanted to cleanse me of my “sin”

•I was the only out trans man in my entire school of 2000 students. I knew zero trans people. Everything I had to learn as a kid about being trans was done so entirely by myself. Additionally, the school’s Gay-Straight-Alliance Club kicked me out because I was a masculine trans man

•My parents lied and told me I had certain health concerns which would prohibit me from medically transitioning because they didn’t want me to do it

•I had zero support system. I almost attempted suicide at 14 and self harmed frequently from 13-18 years old

•Many trans people develop eating disorders; for a lot us, we feel we can avoid being misgendered if we look a certain way. It can be caused by depression or from a means of “controlling” something about ourselves when our lives are out of control; I developed anorexia at 16 and struggle every day with it still at 21

•I was constantly told by cis “friends” even cis LGBQ+ “friends” that I would never find anyone to love me because I was trans

•I should point out, I’m not trying to attack other cis LGBQ+ people, I’m trying to point out that injustices and bullying towards trans people happens WITHIN the LGBTQ+ community by cis members. As in, being gay doesn’t mean you’re immune to being a transphobe

•Starting at 14 when I came out, I was constantly asked about how I would have sex since I was trans by both adults and classmates

•I was preyed upon in high school by a guy who had a trans man fetish. The vast majority of trans people will experience a form of sexual abuse/harassment at least once from cis people. Trans people are sometimes seen by cis people as being part of a fetish or like a “sex toy”, thinking we’re just here for their disgusting kinks

•Kids in the hall would pass me at school and make comments like “is that a boy or a girl? *laugh*” or refer to me as an “it”

•There were so little resources for trans people where I lived that I became the trans man every trans person came to for advice meanwhile other cis members of the LGBTQ+ community had many friends to confide in. Trans people are often barred from being accepted into these cis LGBQ+ circles

•A trans man friend of mine, who was a minor at the time, was raped by an adult cis man in a men’s restroom minutes from where I lived. I refuse to use public restrooms due to this fact alone, no matter how cis I look when entering a men’s restroom

•In many places throughout the world, it is illegal to use the restroom of a different gender than you were originally assigned. Even just minding our own business and using the restroom is for some reason an issue among cis people. In one restroom I could be harassed and in the other, I could physically assaulted. Or arrested! Testosterone was the only way I could go into the men’s restroom without being preyed upon by cis men and even then, I have to wait for the place to be empty, even if it’s legal for me to be in there

•When visiting dangerous areas, I have to bind my chest for 12+ hours because I never enter a place where I can take the binder off. In a very conservative area that strictly prides itself in male/female cis people, trans people feel forced to make sure we LOOK either way or else we could be harassed/jumped, as there are places not far from me where non-binary/trans/trans-nb people will not venture to because it’s unsafe. It would be easy to hide I’m gay in a dangerous area, as I just don’t mention being gay, and you can’t inherently “see” as person is gay as it’s a sexual orientation. But in a dangerous area, if I say I’m a man and someone catches on to the fact I’m not a cis man, bad things could happen to me. (I’d like to add that the vast majority of trans hate crimes have been against black trans women and murders in general of trans people have skyrocketed in recent years. A vast majority of these hate crimes are committed by cis white men.)

•A lot of emphasis is put on cis appearances in the trans community, which isn’t always the product of just wanting to express yourself in ways that are traditionally cis. Sometimes we are put in certain situations where we unfortunately MUST look either strictly, stereotypically male/female in order to avoid harassment, and it’s completely anxiety inducing and/or degrading. Some trans people sometimes feel forced to transition to fit in, and a lot trans people are AFRAID to transition or dress without accordance to their original assigned gender because of how we are mistreated by cis people when we do so

•Touching on that, I have encountered people referred to as “transmeds” which are those trans men who think trans men must have gender dysphoria in order to be trans, or that you must want to medically transition to be trans; they commonly place stereotypical, often conservative and toxic, masculine requirements to be a trans man. Many trans men like myself speculate they are the reason why toxic masculinity still thrives like a disease among the trans community. Conservative ideals like this damage the trans community by asserting a trans person DOES look and act a certain way, which is an idea incidentally trans people strive to dismantle among cis people

•Since I’m a trans, gay man, not only can I be bullied by CISHET MEN but also CIS GAY MEN and additionally even other conservative TRANS MEN. If you’re a gay, bi, etc trans person within the LGBTQ+ community, you often face more types of discrimination than cis LGBQ+ people, especially if you are asexual on top of it all, like myself

•Trans people also often encounter terfs, cis “feminists” who believe trans women aren’t real women, and these individuals are found to confidently defend racist, N@zi, white supremacist, and other bigoted attitudes, so just..... gross people

•As a trans person, you’re sometimes made to feel as though you can’t be proud of yourself the same way you can be proud of being gay or lesbian. I’ve witnessed people praising someone for talking about being gay everyday while those SAME PEOPLE complained a trans person talking about being trans ONCE was “annoying” and just “ vying for attention”. Cis people, lgbq+ or not, are sometimes made so uncomfortable by trans people they think calling them annoying will silence them. It’s happened to me almost every single time I’ve tried to come out which is what ultimately led me to be ashamed of myself for many years

•Cis people can often be so unaccepting of our identity that they will intentionally not work on using our correct name/pronouns, withhold using the correct name/pronouns as a form of punishment, or go behind our backs and use the wrong pronouns/name because they don’t think it’s important. Cis people have the luxury of always having their name and pronouns as being a given, and those same people think we are so below them, they think they can choose when we do or do not deserve to be called what we should be called. Deadnaming/intentially misgendering a celebrity you don’t like or person you’re angry with is STILL transphobia

•Just recently, a cis manager outed me to my entire workplace as being trans. Outing someone as trans is VERY DANGEROUS. At the end of the day, you never know who that information could be passed to. Knowing that someone is trans is NEVER your decision to tell people, it’s their private information. If you out someone in a workplace environment, you can and mostly likely will lose your job. However inversely, it is still possible in some places to be fired solely for being trans. If I was in a bad part of my country, her outing me could have cost me my job. Every job I have held thus far has always ended with a cis manager not knowing how to keep their mouth shut about my gender.

Basically, trans people struggle everyday in a vast number of ways and the magnitude of their hardships often go unnoticed due to transphobes or uninformed cishet people trivialising or censoring trans voices. And these are just a FRACTION of things trans people have to deal with regularly. If you aren’t trans, you can’t claim to know what we’re going through. You can only listen to and be there for trans people, read their stories and experiences to be aware of their struggles and how you can make sure you aren’t creating an unsafe space for trans people.

~Terfs and transphobes do not interact~

#I’ll post another answering the people who were asking me what not to ask/say to a trans person #why does this sound so salty I’m sorry #I think it just reminded me of all the times I’ve been harrassed #or seen others get harrassed #lgbtq #transgender #trans #long post